1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to wireless telecommunications systems, and more particularly to wireless location and navigation.
2. Background of Related Art
Points of Interest, commonly abbreviated POIs, are a well known concept in Geographic systems. A Point of Interest is defined for purposes of this invention as an object associated with a latitude and longitude, for some period of time, the location of which at least one person would reasonably be expected to have an interest.
FIG. 5 shows conventional points-of-interest having fixed locations.
In particular, as shown in FIG. 5, several points-of-interest 501-503 depict the locations of a given type of point-of-interest, e.g., fast food restaurants.
Current location aware wireless applications provide the locations of many types of objects. This includes Point of Interest (POI) information for consumers including places of business, tourist destinations, government buildings and similar objects. In addition some applications provide locations of people of interest such as family members and friends. Business applications may provide the tracked locations of employees or their vehicles. Other types of information such as traffic and weather are provided in some applications. All of these applications provide the locations of objects from recorded and stored latitude and longitudes.
However, as the inventor herein has recognized, conventional “Finder” type wireless applications provide locations for objects corresponding to recorded locations. For instance, existing products like mobile navigation applications (e.g., TCS Navigator™ commercially available from TeleCommunication Systems, Inc. of Annapolis, Md., US) and web based products such as Google™ Maps use of points of interest (POIs) based on fixed records of locations only. Using conventional technologies, many movable objects that can be considered Points of Interest can not be pinpointed to a specific fixed location at the time a particular location information request is initiated, nor can the location be provided for a future time span. Conventional technologies have the capability to provide only a static location pre-registered or otherwise pre-stored in a suitable database in response to a location information request.